When I was an adolescent, Canandaigua, my small hometown in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, got its first radio station, WCGR. You can hear it to this day, at 1550 on the AM dial.
Back then, beaming out a signal of 250 mighty watts, WCGR (announcers said it stood for "Watch Canandaigua Grow Rapidly"), broadcast music, news and farm reports to a radius extending about as far as you could throw a rock.
Nonetheless, I thought it was a wondrous and glamorous place – show business! -- and often climbed the stairs to their dusty studio, up above a Main Street storefront. The twin sons of the station’s owner were schoolmates and my father bought on the air advertising time for his drugstore, so no one paid much attention to my hanging out.
One day, I came across some promotional 45 rpm records. They were interviews with celebrities – with spaces left for any given announcer at any given station to ask the pertinent questions, which were conveniently provided by the record company. In an instant, you could make it appear as if your local DJ was actually interviewing Nat King Cole or Bobby Vinton or Carol Channing.
